Grazing Among the Lilies
by gveret
Summary: Occasionally, from time to time, Lena's projects get just a little bit out of hand. (In which Kara proposes and it doesn't go… quite as she expected.)


**Note:** Inspired by a tumblr post and in response to some anti-Semitic choices the Supergirl show and its network are making. This fic is aggressively sappy, silly, Jewish and self-indulgent. Enjoy!

* * *

Kara absentmindedly pats the small, hard shape of the box in her pocket as she walks down the street by Lena's side, on their way back to their apartment after a nice weekend date volunteering . She's been carrying the box with her for months now, and it's become a bit of a nervous habit. Adjust glasses, rub sleeve edge, pat box in pocket.

"What are we doing for Sukkot? J'onn's or your mom's?"

For months it's been in her pocket. For months, she's been trying to gather the courage and conviction to take it out. Lena and Kara's fourth anniversary has come and gone, and still she hasn't asked. She feels the anticipation and impatience of months of waiting gathered in the pit of her stomach. She thinks it might be time.

Kara pats her pocket again. _Still there_.

"Kara?"

Lena's taken her hand, is giving it a gentle squeeze. Kara lifts her head to focus on her. Lucky she never sweats. "Sorry?"

"I was just wondering, Sukkot is coming up," Lena prompts.

"Oh, yeah," Kara says. "I don't think we're doing anything this year."

Lena laughs. "Doesn't sound likely. Your family never lets an opportunity to have a party go. Especially if it's in a funny little tent outside. I'll ask Alex." She bumps her hip against Kara's. "Space cadet."

"Mm-hm."

"You aren't going to defend your honor?"

"I'm very smart and levelheaded," Kara says distractedly.

When they get home, Kara waits for Lena to take off her heels and make herself some tea. Kara herself can't even unlace her shoes at the moment; her hands are shaking too badly. Tearing her shoes in half is probably about all she could manage.

"Hey, Lena, can I ask you something?" Kara says, her voice cracking unimpressively in the middle.

Lena puts down her cup of tea and walks over to her, giving her one of those looks of hers, the disconcerting, exhilarating weight of Lena Luthor's undivided attention. "Of course. What is it?"

Kara clears her throat. "I love you so very deeply, Lena, and I want more than anything to pledge to be by your side for as long as you'll have me. Oh, I think I should..." Kara makes a vague gesture, and then sinks to one knee. She struggles to extract the box from her pocket. That likely would have been easier while she was still standing.

Kara gets back up, takes the box out, and at that point decides she'd be better off standing. "I love you," she continues bravely, popping open the box to reveal the small silver ring within. "I want to show you how much. I want to spend my life with you. Lena Luthor… Will you marry me?"

Lena gasps, eyebrows shooting up. "Oh, wow!" she says. And then, very plainly: "No."

Kara blinks at her, arrested mid-ecstatic laugh, arms half reaching out, ready to catch Lena around the waist and lift her in a celebratory twirl. "No?" she repeats.

Lena shakes her head. "Absolutely not."

"You… you don't want to marry me?"

"I don't."

"You're saying, no wedding."

"Correct."

Kara rocks back on her heels, mind rushing to catch up, body still tensed in void anticipation."Oh. Was this… a bad idea? Do you think? For me to propose right now?"

Lena seems to deflate in relief. "Yes, exactly!" she says, with feeling. "Thank you, Kara. I'm so glad you understand."

"Oh," says Kara, who really, really doesn't.

"Right. Could you give me the ring, please, so I can lock it up?"

Kara's grip tightens on the box. "What? Why? Are you afraid I might try this again?"

Lena nods, smiling happily. "You're so intuitive, Kara. You know me so well."

Kara takes a moment to breathe in, out. Lena doesn't want to marry her. Lena really, _really_ doesn't want to marry her. Not now, and apparently, not ever. "Lena, are we… are we breaking up right now?" she asks, voice drifting slightly upward at the end.

Lena snorts. "Don't be ridiculous, Kara," she says with a dismissive hand gesture. "I love you more than anything. I'm eternally devoted to you. Now give me that engagement ring so I can hide it away in a secure, lead-lined safe somewhere where no one will ever find it."

Kara silently hands Lena the ring, watching, dazed, as Lena snaps on a pair of latex gloves, retrieves a heavy lead box, deposits the ring inside it and leaves the apartment with it under her arm, giving Kara a cheerful little wave.

Kara plops down in a chair at their kitchen counter, absentmindedly eating whatever it is she's grabbed. Might be cream cheese or mashed potatoes or applesauce, she's not sure. It's soft and mushy, either way. She sprinkles cornflakes into it to have something to chew.

So Lena doesn't want to marry her, but is, by her own admission, 'eternally devoted' to Kara. All right. Marriage is not the most benign institution, Kara can't deny that. It's totally possible that Lena has some personal objection to it. Kara could swear she remembers multiple conversations in which Lena's expressed positive feelings about the idea of the two of them getting married, but. It's true that Kara's memory isn't the best. Add to that a good dose of wishful thinking…

Anyway. The important thing is that they're together. They love each other, support and uplift and protect each other, and they don't need some silly paper or a beautiful, romantic, thrilling party where they get to express their undying love and dedication in front of all their friends and family in order to continue to do that. Even if that would be nice.

It wouldn't be so nice if Lena didn't want it.

It's fine.

.

.

Over the next few weeks, things go back to normal. Of course they do. The two of them have been sharing the same space for three years; kicking each other in sleep, eating each other's yogurt, peeing with the door open. A disagreement over a symbolic ceremony is nothing in the face of their bond. It's not like they need to have an open, honest discussion about it or anything.

The only noticeable differences in their routine are the absence of the small bulk of the box in Kara's pocket, and Lena's unusual… preoccupation with a secret side project Kara isn't allowed to know about.

Not that a feverish preoccupation with secret side projects is at all unusual for Lena, it's just that usually she can't hide it from Kara for longer than five minutes, NDAs be damned. But for weeks now, she's been reading, researching and going on various errands, the nature of which Kara knows exactly nothing about.

"I think Lena has a new embarrassing hobby she won't share with me," Kara tells Alex in the DEO training room. "What do you think it could be? Bird watching?"

Alex laughs at her. "I doubt she could come up with a more embarrassing hobby than bedazzling old clothing."

"What? You love the hat I made you."

"Oh, I do. It's still deeply embarrassing."

"Hm," says Kara, unconvinced, and punches a cardboard Krolotean to pieces.

.

.

Kara is leaving the Catco building one evening, rummaging in her bag for her absolutely useful and non-obsolete mp3 player, when she looks up and notices a restless looking Lena standing awkwardly by the entrance.

"Lena! Were you waiting for me?"

"Absolutely," Lena says, with a very strange, twitchy smile.

"I'm sorry! Why didn't you text? Or call? Or show up at my office?"

Lena waves a dismissive hand. "I have something to show you," she says.

"Okay," says Kara, squinting at her.

"It's in the apartment. Actually, I could have just waited for you there. Only just occurred to me." Lena waves her along to a waiting taxi. "Don't talk to me during the cab ride," she says, then adds immediately, "Actually, do. Let's make small talk. How was your day?"

They make terrible, stilted small talk for the remainder of the ride, and all the way up to their floor. At the door, Lena takes a deep breath.

"Kara, I think we should talk about something," she says, swinging the door open.

"You know what, I think so too. I've actually been—Whoa!" The apartment is filled to bursting with bouquet upon bouquet of large, vibrant lilies. In the doorway, Lena has gone down on one knee.

She pulls a familiar box out of her purse, flicking it open and directing a disarmingly hopeful, infuriatingly self-satisfied smile at Kara. "Kara Danvers Zor-El," she says, "will you marry me?"

Kara struggles for words and for breath, a little bit. "What! What do you mean, _Will you marry me_! Is that _my_ ring!"

"Oh, it is," says Lena. "At first I thought it might be nice for both of us to have engagement rings. But then I realized I never actually accepted mine, and it might be presumptuous to show up to your proposal wearing it. But I had it, of course, since I took it from you, as you know, so I thought I might as well use it. But then I thought, it was intended for me! So what would I give to you? So I made another one after all. I have it with me here, in case you said yes. Here it is."

Lena pulls a tiny ziplock bag out of her bra and extends it to Kara. Kara accepts it, in a state of perfect bewilderment. The ring is grey and solid and warm to the touch, likely from having been kept pressed to Lena's body. Her breasts, specifically, some part of Kara's brain helpfully supplies.

"It's made of steel," Lena says with a lovely little laugh. "I thought you'd appreciate that. I inscribed it on the inside. Let me know if it's grammatically incorrect."

Kara holds the ring up, looking at its inner side where tiny, elegant letters are engraved into the metal. They aren't in the Latin script. Kara turns the ring slowly to read all of it, the pressure behind her eyes building.

 _You are the love of my soul_ , side by side in Hebrew and Kryptonian.

"So, what do you think?" Lena asks, still from her position bent on one knee among the unnecessary quantities of lilies.

"What do I think?" Kara repeats, voice slightly choked with impending tears.

"Is the syntax okay? Also, does being my wife sound appealing at all?" Lena gives her a charming smile.

"What—Is it _appealing?_ What are you _talking_ about? Why—I thought you might be, politically? Or just, personally opposed—Why didn't you want this when _I_ asked?" Kara babbles, downright indignant by the end.

"Oh! Shit!" Lena grabs at the material of Kara's pants to pull herself up. "I haven't shown you yet? I'm sorry, Kara. I should have opened with that. Hold on." She gives Kara's hip a squeeze and finally enters the apartment, making a beeline through the maze of bouquets to a discarded briefcase on the kitchen counter.

Lena rummages for a moment before pulling out a sheet of paper and making her way back to Kara.

"It's my Certificate of Conversion," Lena explains happily, handing Kara the paper. "I'm officially Jewish. Took much longer than I'd hoped, honestly."

Kara looks from Lena to the thick piece of paper. _'Found worthy… we call her sister… Lena Leah Luthor'._ Kara chokes out an involuntary little laugh. They made her pick another name? Of course she'd pick one that starts with an L.

"I'd already begun the process when you asked me to marry you, of course, but I was told it might take months yet," says Lena. "And there was a waiting period, which couldn't be expedited even with namedropping and bribery if you can believe that, and I wanted all of it to be a surprise. And then you go and propose long before I'm done. I hadn't even decided what to engrave on your ring yet."

Kara clears her throat, eyes already brimming. She puts the certificate carefully down on a particularly stable-looking group of lilies. "And you decided not to tell me any of that?"

"As I've just said, Kara," Lena says with a tut, " _surprise_."

Kara laughs weakly, reaching out to caress a loose group of Lena's hair, then cup the side of her neck, finger running over the skin of her nape. "You really converted?" she asks quietly. "For me? Are you sure that's all right for you?"

Lena tilts her body forward, places her hands at the small of Kara's back. She's very close, now. Kara's fiancée. "You know I've never been a spiritual person. So now, rather than a former Presbyterian atheist, I'm a Jewish atheist, and I can marry the love of my life in the way she deserves."

Kara tugs Lena to her for a good, tight hug, nosing a little at her hairline. Something occurs to her as she draws back.

"Augh, does this mean we have to have a kosher wedding?"

"Naturally."

"But parve desserts are so _bad._ "

"Well, the obvious solution is to have a vegetarian main course," Lena says very smugly. Clearly, Kara has walked right into her trap.

"Fine. But I'm picking the caterer."

"I'll also leave it to you to pick the officiant. Alex, Winn, J'onn and your cousin have all been pestering me."

Kara smiles, giddy with love, thinking of her family volunteering to bind the two of them in words and ceremony, to help bring Lena fully, legally and spiritually into their family. "Do you want to break the glass? I want to break the glass. We should use a very long glass so we can do it together. How about a fluorescent bulb, the big ones they have in public buildings? That could be fun."

Lena cups Kara's face gently in her hand and leans over for a kiss. Kara is still grinning fiercely, so it lands a little awkwardly; when she pulls back, she appears to have caught the goofy grin bug. "These are all great ideas, but say _yes_ first, maybe?"

"Or, consider this, maybe I should say no, steal your ring, embark on a secretive personal project and ask you again several months from now?"

Lena laughs, sliding her hand into Kara's hair and scratching her scalp lightly. "Do you want to?"

"No! I want to be your damn wife, and spend the rest of my life and whatever's after it by your side. What a question."

"Hold out your hand, then," Lena murmurs, and leans in for another, softer, much more sensuous kiss, blindly sliding the steel ring onto Kara's finger at the same time.

Kara's eyes are closed, her breath caught, but somehow that only adds to the wonder of the moment: the feeling of Lena's fingers in her hair, the tiny circle of pressure of the ring, warmed by Lena's skin; Lena's breath, her heartbeat, her kiss—Kara is engulfed, in awe, in love.

Lena pulls back with a tug on Kara's hair and a laugh. "You look flabbergasted," she says. "I always thought that was a funny word. Here." She takes Kara's hand and places Kara's own ring in it. When Kara fails to respond, Lena grasps her wrist and flaps her hand around, bumping it against Lena's knuckles.

Kara snorts, straightening out Lena's lovely hand and kissing her fingertips, catching two at once. She turns the ring in her fingers, once, twice, fidgeting, or for luck, and slips it onto Lena's finger.

"Okay," Kara breathes. "Okay. I'm going to be your wife."

"You are," Lena agrees with an attractive quirk of her eyebrows. "Do you think I should wear a kippah?"

Kara laughs. "You'd look very handsome," she assures her.

Lena smiles, and Kara grasps her hand, her thumb running repeatedly over the cool surface of the engagement ring she's just placed there, and kisses her future wife.


End file.
